SUMMARIZING, PARAPHRASING, and QUOTING
Summarizing
Teaching students how to incorporate sources into their researched efforts is time-intensive. The note-taking process familiarizes students with their source material. Students about to tackle a seventeen page article want to know what material will be useful in their research paper; if you have them summarize their articles, then students already know the main points. Summaries on a note card are different from written summaries of an article. They are brief one or two sentence restatements of a passage or paragraph, not the entire article. The summary’s language should be that of the reader, not of the original text. The following passage is the introductory paragraph to an article from the National Review, 12/31/97 written by Steve Sailer and Stephen Seiler entitled “Track & Battlefield” (Database: Academic Search Elite). A brief summary of the paragraph follows.
Original:
A new study shows that the gender gap in running is not behaving the way it was expected to. EVERYBODY knows that the gap in physical performance between male and female athletes is rapidly narrowing. In fact, in an opinion poll just before the 1996 Olympics, 66 per[cent] agreed that “the day is coming when top female athletes will beat top males at the highest competitive levels.” The most highly publicized scientific study supporting this belief appeared in Nature in 1992: “Will Women Soon Outrun Men?” Physiologists Susan Ward and Brian Whipp pointed out that since the Twenties women's world records in running had been falling faster than men's. Assuming these trends continued, men's and women's records would equalize by 1998 for marathons, and during the early twenty-first century for all other distances (1).
Acceptable Summary:
A ‘new study’ on the running performances of men and women poses a challenge to a 1992 article by Susan Ward and Brian Whipp, “Will Women Soon Outrun Men?,” which suggested that elite women runners might be able to run faster than men by the twenty-first century (Sailer and Seiler 1).
Unacceptable Summary:
A new study shows that the gender gap in running is not behaving the way it was expected to. Most people agree that top female athletes will beat top males at the highest competitive levels by the early twenty-first century.
Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is a detailed rewriting of passages in a reader’s own words. A paraphrase might be as long as (or even longer than) the original. Diction, phrases, nor sentence constructions should match that of the original. An example of paraphrasing follows.
Original:
A new study shows that the gender gap in running is not behaving the way it was expected to. EVERYBODY knows that the gap in physical performance between male and female athletes is rapidly narrowing. In fact, in an opinion poll just before the 1996 Olympics, 66 per cent agreed that “the day is coming when top female athletes will beat top males at the highest competitive levels.” The most highly publicized scientific study supporting this belief appeared in Nature in 1992: “Will Women Soon Outrun Men?” Physiologists Susan Ward and Brian Whipp pointed out that since the Twenties women's world records in running had been falling faster than men's. Assuming these trends continued, men's and women's records would equalize by 1998 for marathons, and during the early twenty-first century for all other distances.
Acceptable paraphrase:
A study published in Nature by Susan Ward and Brian Whipp in 1992, “Will Women Soon Outrun Men?,” indicated that by the end of the twentieth century or the beginning of the next, elite women runners would be able to run as fast as elite men runners in marathons and in other timed running events. Their study affirmed popular ideas about elite women athletes in 1996, that in the future, they would be able to outperform men “at the highest competitive levels.” Ward and Whipp’s study showed that times in women’s track competitions had improved over the last seventy years. If the trend were to continue, women’s records would match men’s in marathon runs in 1998 and in other distance competitions in the early twenty-first century. A ‘new study,’ however, indicates that the opposite may be true (Sailer and Seiler 1).
Unacceptable paraphrase:
A recent study shows that the gender gap in running is not behaving the way it was expected to. We know that the gap in physical performance between male and female athletes is rapidly growing smaller. In fact, in an opinion poll just before the 1996 Olympics, 66 per cent agreed that “the day is coming when top female athletes will beat top males at the highest competitive levels.” The most highly publicized scientific study supporting this belief appeared in Nature in 1992: “Will Women Soon Outrun Men?” Physiologists Susan Ward and Brian Whipp noted that since the Twenties women's world records in running had been falling faster than men's. If these trends continue, men's and women's records will be the same by 1998 for marathons, and during the early twenty-first century for all other distances.
Quoting
Quoting is a word-for-word citing of text; quotation marks surround the quoted passage.
Original:
A new study shows that the gender gap in running is not behaving the way it was expected to. EVERYBODY knows that the gap in physical performance between male and female athletes is rapidly narrowing. In fact, in an opinion poll just before the 1996 Olympics, 66 per cent agreed that “the day is coming when top female athletes will beat top males at the highest competitive levels.” The most highly publicized scientific study supporting this belief appeared in Nature in 1992: “Will Women Soon Outrun Men?” Physiologists Susan Ward and Brian Whipp pointed out that since the Twenties women's world records in running had been falling faster than men's. Assuming these trends continued, men's and women's records would equalize by 1998 for marathons, and during the early twenty-first century for all other distances.
Quotation:
In “Track and Battlefield,” Steven Sailer and Stephen Seiler claim that the popular idea that elite women runners will one day be able to run faster than elite men runners was affirmed by a study published in 1992, which revealed “that since the Twenties women’s world records in running had been falling faster than men’s”(1).
If a quotation cites more than three lines of the original text, it should blocked:
In “Track and Battlefield,” Steven Sailer and Stephen Seiler claim that the popular idea that elite women runners will one day be able to run faster than elite men runners was affirmed by a study published in 1992, which revealed that since the Twenties women’s world records in running had been falling faster than men’s. Assuming these trends continued, men's and women's records would equalize by 1998 for marathons, and during the early twenty-first century for all other distances. (1)
General rules for summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting can be found in the course textbooks, where you will also find sample summaries, paraphrases, and quotations. Students can be referred to any number of resources (electronic and print) for guidelines on how to read sources and take notes. Setting aside some class time for teaching these skills is advisable. Paraphrasing, especially, is difficult for students since they often do not have the vocabulary or enough experience with a discourse community to rewrite a passage in their own words. What they know is often limited to what they are reading and taking notes on at the moment. To avoid disappointing results in paraphrasing efforts, or in summarizing or quoting efforts, show your students what you expect of them, practicing these research skills with them until you are satisfied that they will be able to take notes and cite sources in their research papers in ways that meet your standards.
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Published by: Department of English Language and Literature
Last Update: July 14, 2003 by English Web Manager
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